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4 YEARS AGO
There’s always a first time for everything.
First breath. First smile. First step. First day of school. First time behind the wheel. First time with a woman. First fist fight.
First time watching a guy get whacked with a bat.
He holds his hands up, teetering. His right kneecap has been broken. “I swear to you, Carmine! I swear. I don’t have it!”
“I don’t like hearing that. You know why?” Carmine spins the bat around in his hands, then he stops and points it at the guy. “Because the boss don’t like hearing it.”
Carmine lines the bat up, like he’s about to hit a home run, then swings, connecting with the guy’s left kneecap.
The man goes down, howling. Tears slide down his face. He’s breathing heavily.
“I swear—” he stops to catch his breath “—I can get it! Give me a little more time. That’s…” He rocks on his back, his hands like claws, wanting to grab his knees but in too much pain. “That’s all I need. More time.”
“That’s what you told me two weeks ago.”
“Yeah.” He opens and closes his hands. “I had some issues.”
“Issues.” He narrows his eyes. “Like borrowing more money. You’re a degenerate gambler. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“All the time,” the guy says. “All the time. But—” He takes a deep breath. He’s saturated with sweat, from the knees and from nerves. “If I’m dead? Who’s gonna pay my debt?”
Carmine shrugs. “Sometimes it’s a loss worth taking. We can’t afford to pay from our pockets? We pay with our lives. That’s the way the deal works. ’Cause you keep coming back for more.”
“But I swear to you. I can get it this time. My old lady—she’s coming into some money.” He pauses to take a breath. “Besides…I paid you. YEAH! I paid you something.”
“You borrowed more.”
The guy scrunches up his face. “I don’t remember that, Carmine.” Air whistles through his nose while he tries to breathe through the pain and remember. “Check your book. Check your book.”
Carmine looks at me and nods toward the guy. He goes to hand me the bat, but I shake my head. The less blood on my suit, the better. Besides, this is his deal, not mine. I stand with my back to the wall, watching.
He really starts hitting the guy with the bat. He stops just short of killing him. The man makes low whining noises, probably from all the cracks in his bones. He must be in his fifties, and he’s bleeding out on a floral rug that probably belonged to his ma at some point.
“The money,” Carmine says, standing over him. “Two days. Or you’re dead.”
He watches the guy with hard eyes, then runs a hand through his hair, taming it. It’s as wild as his swings of the bat. But not as wild as usual. Usually, he would have killed the guy. He’s been whacking too many of them. Drawing too much attention.
We slide into his Cadillac after he deposits the bat in the deep trunk. He drives, and we head deeper into New York. I glance at my watch. Already late.
I point. “Stop here.”
He narrows his eyes. “Valentino’s? What you getting there?”
“You remember what today is?”
“Oh, yeah. Almost slipped my mind, Lilo. No wonder the place looks empty. Special occasion. Better you than me.” He takes out a cigarette and lights it up. Blood stains his fingers along with old tobacco.
He isn’t much older than me. Late twenties. But so different from me. Everything he does is reckless.
“There’s Nose,” he says, referring to Jimmy Delfino, who stands in front of the bakery with a box. “What’s he doing here?”
“You can’t figure it out?”
He laughs. It’s bumpy. “Yeah.” He touches his forehead with the two fingers that holds the smoking cigarette, then he makes a BOOM noise, like his mind has just been blown.
